logo
Google offers buyouts to staff in latest round of cost cutting

Google offers buyouts to staff in latest round of cost cutting

Nahar Net11-06-2025

by Naharnet Newsdesk 11 June 2025, 16:33
Google has offered buyouts to staff in several divisions in a fresh round of cost cutting, according to a company statement and reports from several news outlets.
It's not clear how many employees are affected, but the offers were made to staff in Google's search, advertising, research and engineering units, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"Earlier this year, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance for U.S.-based Googlers, and several more are now offering the program to support our important work ahead," a Google spokesperson, Courtenay Mencini, said in a statement.
"A number of teams are also asking remote employees who live near an office to return to a hybrid work schedule in order to bring folks more together in-person," Mencini said.
The tech company started trimming its headcount in 2023, when it announced that it was laying off 12,000 staff as the economic boom that fueled demand for online services during the COVID-19 pandemic started to fade.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Nations are meeting to drum up trillions to combat poverty
Nations are meeting to drum up trillions to combat poverty

Nahar Net

timean hour ago

  • Nahar Net

Nations are meeting to drum up trillions to combat poverty

by Naharnet Newsdesk 30 June 2025, 12:04 Many of the world's nations are gathering starting Monday in Spain for a high-level conference to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor nations and try to drum up trillions of dollars needed to close it. The United States, previously a major contributor, pulled its participation, so finding funding will be tough. The four-day Financing for Development meeting in the southern city of Seville is taking place as many countries face escalating debt burdens, declining investments, decreasing international aid and increasing trade barriers. The United Nations and Spain, the conference co-hosts, believe it is an opportunity to reverse the downward spiral, close the staggering $4 trillion annual financing gap to promote development, bring millions of people out of poverty and help achieve the U.N.'s wide-ranging and badly lagging Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said Wednesday that despite "the headwinds" and high geopolitical tensions, there is hope the world can address one of the most important global challenges — ensuring all people have access to food, health care, education and water. "This conference is an appeal to action," Spain's U.N. Ambassador Hector Gomez Hernandez said, "and we have the extraordinary opportunity to send a very strong message to defend the international community's commitment to multilateralism." High-level delegations, including more than 70 world leaders, are expected in Seville, Mohammed said, along with several thousand others from international financial institutions, development banks, philanthropic organizations, the private sector and civil society. At its last preparatory meeting on June 17, the United States rejected the 38-page outcome document that had been negotiated for months by the U.N.'s 193 member nations and announced its withdrawal from the process and from the Seville conference. The rest of the countries then approved the document by consensus and sent it to Seville, where it is expected to be adopted by conference participants without changes. It will be known as the Seville Commitment — or Compromiso de Sevilla in Spanish. The document says the leaders and high-level representatives have decided to launch "an ambitious package of reforms and actions to close the financing gap with urgency," saying it is now estimated at $4 trillion a year. Among the proposals and actions, it calls for minimum tax revenue of 15% of a country's gross domestic product to increase government resources, a tripling of lending by multilateral development banks, and scaling up private financing by providing incentives for investing in critical areas like infrastructure. It also calls for a number of reforms to help countries deal with rising debt. U.N. trade chief Rebeca Grynspan told a news conference Friday that "development is going backward" and the global debt crisis has worsened. Last year, 3.3 billion people were living in countries that pay more interest on their debts than they spend on health or education — and the number will increase to 3.4 billion people this year, she said. And developing countries will pay $947 billion to service debts this year, up from $847 billion last year. She spoke at a press conference where an expert group on debt appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented 11 recommendations that they say can resolve the debt crisis, empower borrowing countries and create a fairer system. While the U.S. objected to many actions in the outcome document, American diplomat Jonathan Shrier told the June 17 meeting: "Our commitment to international cooperation and long-term economic development remains steadfast." He said, however, that the text "crosses many of our red lines," including interfering with the governance of international financial institutions, tripling the annual lending capacity of multilateral development banks and proposals envisioning a role for the U.N. in the global debt architecture. Shrier also objected to proposals on trade, tax and innovation that are not in line with U.S. policy, as well as language on a U.N. framework convention on international tax cooperation. The United States was the world's largest single funder of foreign aid. The Trump administration has dismantled its main aid agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, while drastically slashing foreign assistance funding, calling it wasteful and contrary to the Republican president's agenda. Other Western donors also have cut back international aid. The U.N.'s Mohammed said the U.S. withdrawal from the conference was "unfortunate," stressing that "many of the recommendations you see cannot be pursued without a continuous engagement with the U.S." After Seville, "we will engage again with the U.S. and hope that we can make the case that they be part of the success of pulling millions of people out of poverty."

Canada says Trump, Carney to resume trade talks
Canada says Trump, Carney to resume trade talks

MTV Lebanon

time4 hours ago

  • MTV Lebanon

Canada says Trump, Carney to resume trade talks

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said late Sunday trade talks with US have resumed after Canada rescinded its plan to tax US technology firms. US President Donald Trump said Friday that he was suspending trade talks with Canada over its plans to continue with its tax on technology firms, which he called 'a direct and blatant attack on our country.' The Canadian government said 'in anticipation' of a trade deal 'Canada would rescind' the Digital Serves Tax. The tax was set to go into effect Monday. Carney's office said Carney and Trump have agreed to resume negotiations. 'Today's announcement will support a resumption of negotiations toward the July 21, 2025, timeline set out at this month's G7 Leaders' Summit in Kananaskis,' Carney said in a statement. Carney visited Trump in May at the White House, where he was polite but firm. Trump traveled to Canada for the G7 summit in Alberta, where Carney said that Canada and the US had set a 30-day deadline for trade talks. Trump, in a post on his social media network last Friday, said Canada had informed the US that it was sticking to its plan to impose the digital services tax, which applies to Canadian and foreign businesses that engage with online users in Canada. The digital services tax was due to hit companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb with a 3 percent levy on revenue from Canadian users. It would have applied retroactively, leaving US companies with a $2 billion US bill due at the end of the month. 'Rescinding the digital services tax will allow the negotiations of a new economic and security relationship with the United States to make vital progress,' Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement. Trump's announcement Friday was the latest swerve in the trade war he's launched since taking office for a second term in January. Progress with Canada has been a roller coaster, starting with the US president poking at the nation's northern neighbor and repeatedly suggesting it would be absorbed as a US state. Canada and the US have been discussing easing a series of steep tariffs Trump imposed on goods from America's neighbor. Trump has imposed 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum as well as 25 percent tariffs on autos. He is also charging a 10 percent tax on imports from most countries, though he could raise rates on July 9, after the 90-day negotiating period he set would expire. Canada and Mexico face separate tariffs of as much as 25 percent that Trump put into place under the auspices of stopping fentanyl smuggling, though some products are still protected under the 2020 US-Mexico-Canada Agreement signed during Trump's first term.

German minimum wage set to rise by about 14% over the next 18 months
German minimum wage set to rise by about 14% over the next 18 months

Nahar Net

time3 days ago

  • Nahar Net

German minimum wage set to rise by about 14% over the next 18 months

by Naharnet Newsdesk 4 hours Germany's minimum wage is set to rise by about 14% over the next 18 months under an agreement that appears to defuse a potentially divisive issue for the new government. A commission in which employers and labor unions are represented recommended on Friday that the minimum wage rise from its current 12.82 euros ($15) per hour to 13.90 euros at the beginning of 2026 and 14.60 euros a year later. The head of the panel, Christiane Schönefeld, said it faced "a particular challenge this year in view of the stagnating economy and the uncertain forecasts." She said it conducted "very difficult talks, which were complicated further by the expectations expressed in public." Germany, which has Europe's biggest economy, has had a national minimum wage since 2015. It was introduced at the insistence of the center-left Social Democrats, who were then — as they are now now — the junior partners in a conservative-led government. It started off at 8.50 euros per hour, but the independent commission reviews its level regularly. There has been one political intervention, however: under then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, the government in 2022 ordered an increase to 12 euros an hour, fulfilling a campaign pledge by Scholz. In their campaign for this year's election, the Social Democrats called for an increase to 15 euros. New Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative bloc strongly opposed another government-ordered raise. Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, a leading Social Democrat, said she would implement the commission's proposal. She said she "can live well with it." "Of course we wanted more for people in this country," she told reporters. But she praised the panel for reaching consensus on an increase, "because it looked for a long time as though we wouldn't get an agreement at all, and then of course we would have had to talk in the coalition about how to deal with this."

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store